Main menu

Post navigation

Episode 1: Welcome Designers!

I’ve decided if they can’t see the Empire State Building from the roof of the residence, they can’t film Project Runway there.

THE DESIGNERS

They spent little time on them…there’s no point. Most of them won’t be around long enough for us to really care who they are. A few made instant and lasting impressions…not all of them good.

Before I get started I have to pat myself on the back a little about deciphering Jesse’s “actor in Orlando” status to mean Disney cast member. He will from now on be known only as Capt. Jack.

Seth Aaron

This “punk” Brian Setzer rockabilly wannabe really pissed me off when he broke the bed and then didn’t have the cojones or courtesy to take it himself. Instead the person with the worst connecting flight got it. Nothing but class, nothing but class.

I also don’t get the shoeless aspect of his personality, or why they feel the need to keep pointing it out to us through close ups of his stocking feet and discarded pirate boots. Perhaps one of the editors has a foot fetish.

And I didn’t care for his garment, either.

But that is just my sense of style colliding with his. I’m not a fan of plaid curtain-hemmed mini dresses with big red visible zippers that appear out of nowhere and strange “suspenders” that turn into straps. But the construction was good and it did give us a sense of who he is going to be as a designer: one I will undoubtably dislike. This also showed us that the judges have finally decided not to care about how short the hemlines are.

Janeane (aka The Crier):

Oh Lordy, another crier. But she has Christopher beat right out of the gate. She cried in the confessional, she cried when she saw the apartment, she cried in the workroom, she cried in the sewing room…you get the idea. I can’t wait to see what she does the first time she’s torn to pieces by the judges. Although, it didn’t seem to stop Christopher from being around forever…maybe it’s her strategy.

Her dress had “issues” (Yeah, like it’s a little black dress in a challenge that is supposed to show who you are as a designer). So she started over, with two hours to go. Now that takes balls or a complete lack of sewing knowledge because unless you cut something wrong, you can always fix what went kershplewie. I can’t tell if her jumping ship was incompetence, or an extreme crises of self confidence. Either one is going to get her in trouble in the future.

The separates looked fine, even if they were a bit schlumpy, and she made it through.

I hope the producers budgeted for extreme kleenex consumption.

Ping (Pong)

I am so loving Ping I almost can’t stand it. I love her little grin, her complete confidence, and her complete lack of sewing acumen. This could be a DISASTER.

“Drapey” has been done before (who could forget Romy), but this wasn’t exactly draping:

This was extreme deconstruction.

And God help me I LOVED it. The colors were perfect, the wrap gave it a nice punch of texture, and, hell, I even liked the single suspender. There was a lot of fabric, but you could still plainly see the curve of the woman underneath it: her waist, the collar bone peeking out, the way it hugged her hips…

Yes, you would end up on the worst dressed list for actually wearing it, but it was original and sassy and boy did you remember it after the legions finished on the runway. How many looks can you say that about in the first couple of shows?

I went back and watched her casting video. She doesn’t seem to know very much about tailoring in the old fashioned sense of the word. If she is a one trick pony this is going to go very, very wrong.

Anthony

Funniest guy on the show. Period.

The one liners were cracking me up. And he seemed to be more on the sunny side of things, instead of ripping into other people. Were you worried when he ended up in the bottom three? I wasn’t. I knew that the producers weren’t going to let them send home the most memorable African American gay guy in Alabama’s history, and clearly the most interesting personality on the show. Until he sends something unforgivable down the runway, he is safe as kittens. But let’s face it, he wants to do pageant wear, so something unforgivable might be right around the corner.

As a designer, he didn’t do anything for me. I didn’t like the fabric, the cut, the atrocious hip holster big enough for a surface to air missile…

But, he made it through and I am looking forward to his time on the show.

Quick aside. Note to designers. Unless you pull it off perfectly, and I do mean PERFECTLY, do not put anything to extend a woman’s hips in your silhouette. We spend hours at the gym and forego almost every tasty treat to make the damn things as small and unobtrusive as possible. You throw a giant flower, poof, or architectural detail there and we won’t even try the damn thing on.)

WINNER AND LOSER

The winner, Emilo, was given the “he will be in the top or bottom three, can you guess which one?” edit. Tim Gunn fretted that he would not have something finished enough to send down the runway. They showed him endlessly pinning strappy bits onto his dress. He hadn’t had time to do a first fitting with the model…the suspense was not really killing me. Once you saw that he was going to finish you knew that he would be in the top three.

He decided on the risky strategy of making sure the garment was well made. There’s something we haven’t seen in a while. It was not an ambitious silhouette, but it was full of lots of details that take gobs of time to pin and sew. I liked it in spite of my natural aversion to prints, but could have done without the solid bands that came down into the skirt. It hugged the model in all the right places and was very flattering (more so if someone could convince his model to stand up straight and put those shoulders back!).

Christiane got auf’ed.

It must so completely suck to be the first one sent home. But no one even came close to the level of disaster she found deep within her designer soul:

She found the ugliest fabric on the Central Park benches, and made it into such a sloppy mess of a dress that even the model looked like she was thinking “I look ridiculous”.

The draping didn’t match up at all…the placement of the contrasting fabric looked random. Well, except for the boob sling on the front. WTF?

Gaudy print matched with shiny fabric…tsk tsk tsk.

I immediately thought of a very similar train wreck from last season:

So, the first ugly outfit is now on a dress form in the work room. The same dress that we will see later in the run and think “who did that one? I don’t even remember.”

HEIDI

Heidi, pregnant as always, looked a lot softer than usual. Having one on deck seems to really agree with her.

PREDICTIONS

Someday Michael Kors will wear color in the judge’s chair and we will all fall over from shock.

The editors will continue to give the show’s ending away by the second commercial break.

Someone other than Ping will make pants, goddammit! And if they don’t I will go down there myself and demand a pants challenge!

As for the designers? Too soon to make an educated guess. Anyone of them can have a fashion breakdown and end up going home. I have to say that I am routing for Anthony, just because he is fun, not because he is a good designer. And, as they have shown before (cough, cough, Christopher), lack of talent doesn’t necessarily mean get you auf’ed.